Ostrovsky's play,[20] upon which _The Power of Evil_ is founded, is a strong and gloomy drama of domestic life. A merchant's son abducts a girl from her parents, and has to atone by marrying her. He soon wearies of enforced matrimony and begins to amuse himself away from home. One day while drinking at an inn he sees a beautiful girl and falls desperately in love with her. The neglected wife discovers her husband's infidelity, and murders him in a jealous frenzy. The story sounds as sordid as any of those one-act operas so popular with the modern Italian composers of sensational music-drama. But in the preparation of the libretto Serov had the co-operation of the famous dramatist Ostrovsky, who wrote the first three acts of the book himself. Over the fourth act a split occurred between author and composer; the former wished to introduce a supernatural element, recalling the village festival in "Der Freischütz" into the carnival scene; but Serov shrank from treating a fantastic episode. The book was therefore completed by an obscure writer, Kalashinkev. Thus the lofty literary treatment by which Ostrovsky sought to raise the libretto above the level of a mere "shocker" suffered in the course of its transformation. The action of the play takes place at carnival time, which gives occasion for some lively scenes from national life. The work never attained the same degree of popularity as _Judith_ or _Rogneda_. Serov died rather suddenly of heart disease in January 1871, and the orchestration of _The Power of Evil_ was completed by one of his most talented pupils, Soloviev. We have read Tchaikovsky's views upon Serov. Vladimir Stassov, after the lapse of thirty years, wrote in one of his last musical articles as follows: "A fanatical admirer of Meyerbeer, he succeeded nevertheless in catching up all the superficial characteristics of Wagner, from whom he derived his taste for marches, processions, festivals, every sort of 'pomp and circumstance,' every kind of external decoration. But the inner world, the spiritual world, he ignored and never entered; it interested him not at all. The individualities of his _dramatis personæ_ were completely overlooked. They are mere marionettes." His influence on the Russian opera left no lasting traces. His strongest quality was a certain robust dramatic sense which corrected his special tendency to secure effects in the cheapest way, and kept him just on the right side of that line which divides realism from offensive coarseness and bathos. Two more quotations show an interesting light on Serov. The first is a confession of his musical tastes, written not long before his death: "After Beethoven and Weber, I like Mendelssohn fairly well; I love Meyerbeer; I adore Chopin; I detest Schumann and all his disciples. I am fond of Liszt, with numerous exceptions, and I worship Wagner, especially in his latest works, which I regard as the _ne plus ultra_ of the symphonic form to which Beethoven led the way."